


Don't Let Me Suffer

by Charolastra



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Gore, Gun Violence, Religious Mentions, Torture, Violence, bullet wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 05:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20615975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charolastra/pseuds/Charolastra
Summary: Diego gets to the apartment just before Eudora dies, but she has one last request.She doesn't want to bleed out.--A warm-up drabble.





	Don't Let Me Suffer

_"...Are you going to let me suffer?"_

Diego looked down at his partner, horror pulling his face tight. "What the hell do you mean? I'll just--just take you ba-b-ba-..."

Diego shook his head ferociously. His stutter only returned in times of stress, fear, to remind him how small he was; He put his hands to his temples, streaking his ears with red, and pushed until the buzzing had lowered to a dim roar.

"I'm taking you back," Diego promised, though not without a great deal of effort.

"Center of ma-ass," sputtered Eudora with a knowing shake of her head. Her chest rose and fell in a hiccuping sort of way; Another circular stain seeped through her purple shirt like a bad dye job. Diego felt his heart leap into his throat at the very thought.

Patch lay bleeding right beneath him, a bullet stuck deep into her abdomen, and she still found the time to tell him how wrong he was. If it weren't so wretched, he might've laughed.

Gingerly, the leather-clad man traced her side with two trembling fingers, prodding, until Patch's breath hitched painfully and a tiny nub registered on the pad of his finger. The end of the bullet. Too slick with blood, his fingers would be useless here; a knife, too dangerous. Patch /was/ right. "Ce-center of m-mm-mass."

"Shoot to kill." Patch grinned, a sardonic sort of expression. That pitched voice became weaker and she coughed, hard, spasming. Each body muscle pulled into a ball until she slumped onto her side, tensed for all the world like she might condense into nothingness. Over the rising, falling line of her shoulder, blood mixed with spit, smacking onto the carpet in sickening clumps.

It was another minute yet before she had control of her faculties, a minute where Diego tried in vain to rouse her, lift her, anything, to get them closer to a hospital before she could bleed out on the floor of this dingy hotel room. Whether voluntary or not Patch would not move. In her few moments of lucidity, she repeated the same question to Diego: "Are you going to let me suffer?"

Thrice more before Diego shook her by the shoulders, afraid of what she might persuade him to do. They could make it to the nearest whatever-it-was. They had to make it. "Get up, okay? Get up. Come on, up, we're going..."

Interrupted by the sound of a hand banging on metal, Diego followed a blood-laved arm to what must've been Patch's government issued gun. The barrel still wept tendrils of smoke and was thus apparently the only mourner of whatever madness fell to pieces here. Eudora tapped the soft handle until she could meet Diego's misty eyes.

"I don't want to bleed out."

"What the fuck are you asking me to do? What the f-ffu--"

"I don't want.._to bleed out. Diego_."

Patch heaved once again and curled away from Diego, shaking in the throes of anemia. Diego shook, too, at the weight of her request, head to toe. Her pistol in his hand felt a million times heavier and his arms weaker tenfold. Something--tears?--blurred his vision so much he could hardly line up the point blank shot, ensuring, quite horribly, she would not bleed to death.

He liked to think Patch looked content in the end. She found acceptance in the few moments she could think, perhaps, and her smile was not a spasm, but her parting gift to Diego. Patch was religious. She prayed to a benevolent God who would protect her family and friends and who would take her home, to heaven, when He saw fit. Perhaps that was her smile for the pearly gates, the light in her eyes. It may not have been the truth, but it was much kinder on the mental stability of a man when pondering what he had just done. Tolerable, compared to the truth that the light in her eyes was merely like a star's: burning brighter just before it dies.

The Hargeeeves house was quieter that night. Emptier. Even with Five and Vanya back.

Diego stayed at the apartment until the cops came. Didn't fight when they cuffed him, weak and weepy, and lead him to the array of cop cars outside the shitty motel.


End file.
